Asian American Biographies

See Asia Society's online resources & upcoming programs celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The following performers are participating in Asian American Tales of Being Urban: Living, Loving and Getting By (May 7-8).

(Also see bios of performers in Dancing Asia/New York and Tree Song )

Michael Kang
Michael Kang most recently is inpost-production with his feature film debut "The Motel" which is being produced by Indie veteran director Miguel Arteta ("Chuck & Buck," "The Good Girl"). Michael was a fellow in the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, 2002. "The Motel" is the recipient of the Sundance/NHK International Filmmaker's Award, 2003. In 2002, he received the Geri Ashur Award in Screenwriting through the New York Foundation for the Arts. He also won the 24th Annual Asian American International Film Festival Screenplay Competition, 2001. Michael recently completed directing Second Unit work for Wayne Wang on the upcoming film "Because of Winn-Dixie" where he got to direct a live bear. His short film "A Waiter Tomorrow" received both the FilmCore Post-Production Grant, 1998 and the Freaky Film Festival, Audience Choice Award 1999. His film "Japanese Cowboy" was a co-recipient of the Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grant, 1999 and the Special Jury Prize at Film Fest New Haven, 2000. In addition, you may recognize him as the "Delivery Guy" alongside playwright David Henry Hwang in the short film "Asian Pride" Porn by Greg Pak.

Eugenia Kim
One day fresh out of a year-long stint at Allure magazine, Eugenia Kim was shopping in Soho. Eugenia had recently shaved her head because of a bad haircut, and was wearing a red guinea-feathered cloche she had made in her millinery class at the Parsons School of Design. She had designed the hand-feathered hat with the intention of resembling hair in some abstract way and to keep her bald head warm.

Several store owners immediately took notice. By the end of the day, the jobless Eugenia now had appointments with two of the stores to see her collection. She didn't have a collection, so she just made two cloche styles in many different colors. The next week, her hand-feathered cloches, in vibrant colors like lavender and electric blue, were in the windows of Bond 07 in Noho and Selima Optique in Soho. At the end of the month, Barneys New York had placed their first order.

Exactly a year later, Eugenia Kim opened an eponymous retail store in the East Village in downtown New York, where she sells her ready-to-wear collection of women's and men's hats alongside her custom couture pieces and bridal headwear. Eugenia's hats can now be found in about 20 retail locations worldwide. Fans include everyone from girls who summer in the Hamptons to hip-hop artists, from modern-day dandies to club kids, and of course, girls who just want to have fun. She is a personal favorite among top editors, fashion designers, and makeup artists, and counts Jennifer Lopez, Lauren Hill, Gisele, Eve, Ashley Judd, and Cynthia Rowley among her devotees.

Ken Leung
Ken Leung is humbled to be handed five minutes he knows not how to spend. He appeared here in 1999 in a play called The Road Home (by James Lecesne, dir. Lawrence Sacharow), which profiled the stories of survivors of violence and was performed at the Hague Appeal for Peace that May. Films: Rush Hour, Keeping the Faith, Strip Search (HBO) and the upcoming SFC (Showtime), Face and Saw. Upcoming TV: The Jury, The Webster Report. He has lived in this city his whole life. His best friends are participating in this, making it especially humbling.

Rekha Malhotra
Born in London, raised in Queens and Westbury, Long Island, Rekha Malhotra (aka DJ Rekha) is one of the pioneers of New York's South Asian music scene. As founder of Basement Bhangra™ and co-founder of Mutiny she has been instrumental in introducing the sounds of Bhangra and British Asian music to North America. Beginning her DJ career while still a student at Queens College, Rekha was drawn to radio through an interest in community activism. In 1994 she made an appearance on the Radio Bandung newszine, became a regular guest and eventually produced segments for the show. Community radio introduced her to filmmaker Vivek Bald who shared an appreciation for music coming out of the UK on Nation records (i.e. Fun da mental, Asian Dub Foundation). In November of 1997 she co-organized a fundraising event for a documentary Bald was assembling on the Asian presence in UK dance music which grew into a monthly event named for the film: Mutiny.

By that time however, Rekha was already well known for her involvement in another monthly event. In November of 1996, a "Dance India" showcase organized by the Ethnic Folk Arts center paired her with Toronto's Punjabi By Nature, and in February of the following year she opened for the group at SOBs nightclub in Manhattan. The club was so impressed by the hundreds who turned out on a Tuesday night that Rekha and her partner DJ Joy were asked to develop a concept for a regular night. One month later Basement Bhangra™ (named with respect for the basement parties where she got her start) was launched, with Bally Sagoo headlining.

For her role in creating Basement Bhangra™, Rekha has been featured in the Village Voice, the New York Times, the Times of India and the Daily News, in addition to magazines like Billboard, New York, and Stress. Basement Bhangra™ and it's founder have also attracted extensive TV coverage, appearing on Good Day New York, Shift TV and a PBS documentary entitled DESI: South in New York--as well as TV shows in Japan and Denmark and on Ciao, an international program aired in 60 markets worldwide. Most recently she was interviewed for the National Public Radio network's 5 million listeners as part of a segment on Bhangra.

In November 1999 her commitment to breaking British Asian music in the U.S. was repaid when she was invited to London by Mercury Prize-winner Talvin Singh to DJ the re-launch of his club night Anokha. Considered by Jane magazine to be "among the genre's most important players in the United States" Rekha has also been pivotal in forging the international network that sustains Bhangra and other contemporary South Asian music. Accordingly her DJ itinerary includes not only New York and numerous cities across the U.S but also Bombay, New Delhi, Montego Bay, Toronto and London. Most recently, she travelled to Sweden to participate in the 5th anniversary celebrations of the Fargfabriken Museum in Stockholm.

At home in NY she's brought her distinct style of DJing to events like Soundlab, P.S. 1's Warm Up and Central Park's Summerstage concert series and played alongside artists as diverse as the Roots, Rah Digga, and Duran Duran. But her musical influence in the city extends far beyond records she breaks as DJ. Through her production company Sangament (sangam is Hindi for confluence'Ça place where two rivers flow together) she has brought artists like Bally Sagoo, Apache Indian and Asian Dub Foundation to some of the city's best known live venues (including Irving Plaza, SOBs and the Cooler).

Having always viewed her involvement with music as inseparable from community activism, Rekha lectures extensively at colleges and institutions about Bhangra and South Asian cultural production. In May of 2000 she spoke about the evolution of Bhangra music for the Smithsonian Institute's first ever South Asian public program. She has also given a talk and demo at the Museum of Natural History on hip-hop and the South Asian music scene and has given numerous DJ workshops to youth nationwide, including the well-known Take Back the Decks. Her latest project, Your Attention Please, is a monthly fundraiser that partners with organizations addressing such issues as human rights, domestic abuse and police brutality and gives her a chance to bring classical, non-dance oriented South Asian music into a club setting. In addition to her public activities, she is working on independent music projects with various producers in her spare time.

Sunita S. Mukhi, Ph.D
Sunita is a performance scholar, artist and culture worker. She is the Director of the Charles B. Wang Center for Asian/American Culture at the State University of New York in Stony Brook.. For her doctorate in Performance Studies at New York University, her dissertation on the ways in which Asian Indians in the New York City tri-state area express their identity was published by Routeledge/Garland in year 2000 entitled Doing the Desi Thing: Performing Indianness in New York City.

She has also performed, directed and choreographed in university, community, and professional theatrical, television and film productions in Manila, United States, Mexico and Singapore. Her most recent performance works confront the issues of sexuality and women's power such as It's a Drag Being an Indian Woman, Cornucopia: Yet Another Interpretation of the Temptation, Kaleidoscope: A Performance of Poetry.

Liberty's New Wedding Day is a response to the September 11 attacks. As a story-teller, she has composed tales with dynamic women as central characters such as Butterfly and the Pin Man, Princess Guddi Saves NYC, and Hooshari: the Quick Brown Fox.

As a cultural manager, she has produced innovative programming in her former position at the Asia Society.and in her current position as Director of the Charles B. Wang Center. She has developed initiatives with various departments and student organizations of the Stony Brook University to promote the understanding and appreciation of Asian and Asian American cultures.

She has presented on numerous panels on the arts, community and identity of the South Asian Diaspora and continues to mentor, advise and participate as performer in the development of a community of progressive artists and culture workers.

Her written work has also appeared in Contours of the Heart: South Asians Map North America, Art Spiral, and Little India Magazine. Her essay "Underneath My Blouse Beats My Indian Heart: Indian Womanhood, Hindi Film Dance, and Nationalism" is in the volume A Patchwork Shawl (Rutgers University Press) released in the Summer of 1998. She is also a contributor for Desilicious: South Asian Erotic Writings (Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)

Cobi Narita
Cobi Narita has been the beacon of jazz for over four decades in New York City, with a reputation that precedes her throughout the world. Her perseverance and personal commitment to the jazz community and its many musicians continues to be joyful and tireless effort.

In the late 1970s Narita founded Women in Jazz in an effort to expose their talent to the public at large. Saxophonist Carol Sudhalter stated, "What Cobi did was a tremendous pioneering thing: she gave women exposure that they may have never otherwise received." She also found the Universal Jazz Coalition/Jazz Center of New York; now in its 26th year, the organization continues to be a clearinghouse for jazz, offering jazz workshops and seminars as well as black history lectures and films presented by cultural historian Delilah Jackson (founder of the Black Pattie Research Foundation).

Over the years Narita has been a constant star in the jazz community. As bassist Earl May noted, "Cobi is the glue for the jazz family. She holds us all together and she's a guiding light for young musicians." She will be a panelist in April 2002 at The Swedish Jazz Celebration in Stockholm. Regardless of her hectic schedule in jazz, as a mom and grandmother twice over, Narita still has plenty of time for her husband Paul Ash who she married 12 years ago after a 17-year engagement. She noted, "Paul is my silver lining." The legendary Duke Ellington was known to greet his close friends with a kiss on each cheek but he always gave Narita three kisses. Now that's a special lady.

N. Rain Noe
N. Rain Noe is a thirtysomething NYC-based industrial designer and freelance writer. He has worked as a product designer, an ambulance driver, a bartender, a trend forecaster, an English teacher, and host of an online news show, among other things. As a freelance writer he has written film reviews, social commentary and design criticism for magazines in America, Europe, Scandanavia, and on the World Wide Web. Rain is the author of Love in a 10-Block Radius, the urban dating column on AsianAvenue.com, and is currently developing a column for GenerationRice.com. Livejournal at: www.livejournal.com/users/hipstomp

Orlando Pabotoy
Orlando's Credits are as follows, Off-Broadway: Henry V (NYSF), The Roaring Girle (Foundry Theater), Magno in The Romance of Magno Rubio, Watcher and The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, among others. Regional: Taming of the Shrew (Yale Repertory), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Globe Theaters). TV/Film: "Strangers With Candy," "In the Weeds," "The Beat," "City By the Sea," "Whoopi" (NBC).

SuChin Pak
SuChin Pak joined the MTV News Team as a correspondent in May of 2001. Since joining the team, she has co-hosted MTV's pre-Grammy show, and has covered the MTV Movie Awards, the Sundance Film Festival, and the MTV Video Music Awards. As a correspondent for MTV Daily News, she has interviewed TLC, Mariah Carey, Justin Timberlake, P. Diddy, George Lucas, Jane's Addiction, Mary J. Blige, Billy Idol, and Fred Durst, just to mention a few. Beyond the world of entertainment, SuChin covered the aftermath of September 11th for MTV News, contributing segments on young people volunteering and Muslim American women. Most recently, SuChin's MTV News special "My Life (Translated)" examined her experiences as a Korean-American and the lives of other first-generation Americans living their lives as "all-American kids," but also trying to balance their American lifestyle with the customs and rules derived from their family's backgrounds. SuChin also nabbed an exclusive sit-down interview with pop queen Britney Spears for "All Eyes On…Britney Spears" in the fall of 2003.

SuChin never planned on a career in television. Television came looking for her. During high school while volunteering for Youth in Government, an organization aimed at involving and educating young people in the political process, SuChin was interviewed for the news by KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco. The program director for the station happened to see the piece and approached her to host "Straight Talk 'N Teens," a new magazine format teen show covering everything from entertainment to topical issues such as teen pregnancy and drug abuse. This "after-school job" became SuChin's introduction to the entertainment world. Her first big interview for the show was Ice-T. Juggling school and television became a mainstay in SuChin's life.

While attending the University of California at Berkeley as a political science major, SuChin was once again discovered, when the producer of a PBS Science show called "Newton's Apple" saw a tape of her and called her in for an audition. She landed the job and became the youngest of five hosts of the show, and spent her college years lugging her textbooks on shoots to locations as remote as Tahiti.

Following graduation, she was approached by ZDTV (now called Tech TV), a 24-hour national cable network devoted to technology and the internet, for which she was hired as a reporter for a show called "Internet Tonight." After a year with ZDTV, she was recruited to be a correspondent on another teen show called "First Cut" on KRON the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. It had become increasingly clear that television was her calling, and looking to move on from San Francisco, SuChin sent in a tape to the start-up cable network Oxygen. After a year-long audition process, she was hired as a host for "Trackers" and moved to New York. From there, MTV spotted her and came calling.

Born in Korea, SuChin and her family moved to the Bay Area when she was five years old. She graduated with a degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

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